There are four top level items that you seriously need to consider when getting started: food, water, shelter and security. There are many sub-items. You're going to want to create lists. Write each of the four items at the top of a blank page. Then start writing down what you think you need to survive in adverse conditions for a specified duration. Over time you will revise your lists and break items out onto their own pages. The exercise in creating the lists is important because we all have different concerns and needs. What is an absolute requirement for me may not even be something you would consider. There are a lot of resources on the internet to help you discover items for your lists.
Ned in the comments reminded me that a bike really should be on this list. Of course, I don’t really need to say, but a good mountain bike is incredibly useful in a SHTF situation where fuel is hard to get. Ned mentioned that it’d be a good idea to couple the bike with a carrying rack on the front or back, and if you can, an electric generator. I think that’s a pretty damn great idea; only problem is I haven’t managed to find any electric generators for bikes that actually have good reviews. If you know of one, please recommend one down in the comments section.
When speaking to preppers like Jennifer, Luther, and Nygaard, it can be hard to separate the more practical aspects of the lifestyle from the enjoyment that comes from doing things yourself instead of paying someone to do them. When I point out that running a small-scale farm and caring for two kids seems like an awful lot of work to do on top of a full-time job, Nygaard demures. “Yeah, it is. But I choose it. I choose to spend it like this because there are things that give me pleasure. I enjoy canning. I love seeing my work on the shelf. You grew that, and you canned it, and you get a source of pride from that.”
A portable, 2.6 pound stove fueled by naturally occurring scraps sure would come in handy after society breaks down. Voila: the BioLite Camp Stove. Feed it biomass like twigs, pinecones, or wood pellets, and the resulting smokeless fire from this portable grill can get a pot of water boiling in under five minutes. It also generates enough electricity to charge a mobile phone or other gadgets with a USB port. Included is a USB-charged FlexLight, a light with bendable stem that can be positioned to illuminate the cook surface.
It turns out that when you're down to your last moldy hunk of bread and giardia-laced mud puddle, letting it all melt away in a cloud of smoke for a few precious moments can mean the difference between giving up and giving the rat (eating) race another go. If history has anything to say, it's more common than you think for people to happily give up MREs and gunlord harems in return for hastening their ends with carcinogens wrapped up in tidy paper packages. In traumatic situations like war, cancer sticks are often valued more highly than food. Even in the current (more or less) pre-apocalyptic global economy, cigarettes are one of the stable forms of currency.
The thing about disaster preparedness is that it’s hard to stop. I mean, 3AM-5AM still serves up dreadful scenarios every morning, and I usually need a couple cups of coffee to determine whether stockpiling camping gear, Tamiflu, lipstick, and nylons are the next logical steps or merely the ravings of Panic Town. But for now, at least, we’re set. Except for the chocolate.
The stove I have in my prepper gear is a Camp Chef Alpine which is also one of the more popular brands because of its good price, installation, and reliable platform to cook on. These stoves are also very popular with the hunting community, who take these out to fixed campsites when they are out for days or weeks and use the cooker for pan frying fish, boiling water, or cooking steaks from any game they have hunted.

People in the disaster preparedness community often say they are readying for the “shit hits the fan” moments: some future calamity, however plausible or implausible, when we are forced to fall back on our possessions and ingenuity. Doomsday Preppers, the long-running National Geographic show that popularized the term “prepper,” introduced mainstream America to a slew of quirky individuals — mostly men with a love of pricey gadgets and the Second Amendment — and the highly improbable doomsday scenarios for which they’d chosen to prepare.